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Films/Videos Conviction ​ 2010 Betty Anne Waters, who was in and out of foster care as a child, decides to become a lawyer after her brother Kenneth is convicted of murder. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors The Attic Child Lola Jaye 2022 1907: Twelve-year-old Celestine spends most of his time locked in an attic room of a large house by the sea. Taken from his homeland and treated as an unpaid servant, he dreams of his family in Africa even if, as the years pass, he struggles to remember his mother’s face, and sometimes his real name . . . Decades later, Lowra, a young orphan girl born into wealth and privilege, will find herself banished to the same attic. Lying under the floorboards of the room is an old porcelain doll, an unusual beaded claw necklace and, most curiously, a sentence etched on the wall behind an old cupboard, written in an unidentifiable language. Artefacts that will offer her a strange kind of comfort, and lead her to believe that she was not the first child to be imprisoned there . . . External Website

Films/Videos Seeking Justice ​ 2023 In this video, Michelle in Adelaide, South Australia talks about her experience of being falsely diagnosed with Munchausen by Proxy and the upheaval this has caused within her family. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Long Song Andrea Levy 2011 This tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed. The Long Song is narrated by July, a former slave, and starts about 1831 the time of what was known as the Baptist revolt and goes to the end of slavery in the late 1830s. July is telling her story in old age whilst she is living with her son Thomas. The novel is the story of her early life on a plantation called Amity. July describes herself as a mulatto; her father was white, an overseer and raped her mother. She was taken from her mother whilst still young to become the pet and then lady’s maid to Caroline Mortimer, the vapid and foolish sister of the plantation owner. External Website

Films/Videos Careful, He Might Hear You ​ 1983 Careful, He Might Hear You is a 1983 Australian drama film. It is based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Australian- American author Sumner Locke Elliott. Two sisters are locked in a custody battle over their young nephew, PS, who has been raised by his aunt Lila and her husband George since his mother died soon after his birth. When Lila's richer sister Vanessa returns from overseas, she seeks custody of PS, citing the opportunities she can give him. External Website

Films/Videos High Ground ​ 2021 High Ground is a 2020 Australian film directed by Stephen Maxwell Johnson. It tells the story of a massacre of Aboriginal Australians in the Northern Territory by white policemen. A boy who is the only known survivor of the massacre is taken to live with missionaries. External Website

Films/Videos Steve Jobs ​ 2015 The Apple computer company founder, Steve Jobs, was adopted as a baby. In this film, Steve Jobs is portrayed by Michael Fassbender and is a based on the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. The film tells the story of Steve Jobs' life and development of the portable computer around the launch of 3 products - the Apple Macintosh in 1984, the black cube by NeXT in 1988, and the iMac in 1998. External Website

Films/Videos One Life ​ 2023 One Life (2023) is a British biographical drama starring Anthony Hopkins as humanitarian Nicholas Winton (1909-2015). Johnny Flynn plays the young Nicholas Winton who, in 1938, embarks on a project of removing endangered Jewish children in Prague and taking them to safety in England. Winton and his small team (which included his mother (Helena Bonham Carter)) brought 669 children by train from Prague to England where they’d organised foster parents to care for them. It wasn’t until 1988, however, that Winton was recognised for his contribution to saving these children’s lives. External Website

Films/Videos Hunt for the Wilderpeople ​ 2016 Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a movie starring Sam Neill, Julian Dennison, and Rima Te Wiata. A national manhunt is ordered for a rebellious foster kid and his foster father who go missing in the wild New Zealand bush. The film is based on the 1986 book, Wild Pork and Watercress, by NZ writer Barry Crump. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience They Do it with Mirrors (novel) Agatha Christie 1985 Miss Marple senses danger when she visits a friend living in a Victorian mansion which doubles as a rehabilitiation centre for 'delinquents'. Her fears are confirmed when a youth fires a revolver at the administrator, Lewis Serrocold. Neither is injured. But a mysterious visitor, Mr Gilbrandsen, is less fortunate – shot dead simultaneously in another part of the building. Also features an illegitimate child. The novel's first proper film adaptation was the 1985 television film Murder with Mirrors with Sir John Mills as Lewis Serrocold, Bette Davis as Carrie Louise, Tim Roth as Edgar Lawson and Helen Hayes as Miss Marple. A second adaptation was aired on 29 December 1991 in the BBC series Miss Marple starring Joan Hickson as Miss Marple, Jean Simmons as Carrie-Louise Serrocold, Joss Ackland as Lewis Serrocold and Faith Brook as Ruth van Rydock. The film was basically faithful to the novel, with the exception that Alexis survives the attack on his life. Also, Ruth van Rydock is present at the house when the first murder takes place and Lawson attempts to swim across the lake, and does not use a rotted boat. A third adaptation was aired on 1 January 2010 for the fourth season of the ITV series Agatha Christie's Marple, starring Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple, Penelope Wilton as Carrie Louise, Brian Cox as Lewis Serrocold, and Joan Collins as Ruth Van Rydock. This adaptation had several changes and additions. External Website

Films/Videos Atomised ​ 2006 Adaptation of controversial French author Michel Houellebecq's novel Les Particules élémentaires. Bruno (Moritz Bleibtreu) and Michael (Christian Ulmen) half-brothers who are very different from each other. They both had an unusual childhood because their mother was a hippie, instead growing up with their grandmothers and in boarding schools. The film implys their upbringing has led them to develop complex and unsatisfactory sex lives. While Bruno can only find satisfaction in meaningless sex with prostitutes, Michael seems to reject sex altogether, focusing his attention instead on his work in genetics. When Michael meets Annabelle (Franka Potente), a woman who turns into the love of his life, he seems to have the chance at a normal relationship, but one that might threaten the world-changing impact of his scientific studies. In the credits the viewer is led to believe that Michael was awarded the nobel prize and Bruno spent the rest of his life in psychiatric institutes. External Website

Films/Videos Continuous Voices ​ 2020 In this video, Australian artist Robert House discusses how the trauma of being sexually abused as a boy in an orphanage during the 1960s has become integrated into his practice of art. External Website

Films/Videos The Goldfinch (2019) ​ 2019 An adaptation of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning book by Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch explores the life of Theodore Decker after his mother dies in a terrorist bombing. Theodore goes first into foster care, then lives with his alcohic and exploitative father before returning to foster care. There is another CEP character in the film, too, a friend of Theodore's, Pippa, who is in both foster and kinship care. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Orphan of Salt Winds Elizabeth Brooks 2019 Virginia begins the novel as a ten-year-old orphan, alone in a puzzling and difficult adult world. Having grown up in a children’s institution, without the safety-buffer of familial love, she is unable to take anything for granted. She sees her newly adopted home, Salt Winds, with a vision that is both anxiously perceptive and childishly skewed. England, 1939. Ten-year-old Virginia Wrathmell arrives at Salt Winds, a secluded house on the edge of a marsh, to meet her adoptive parents?practical, dependable Clem and glamorous, mercurial Lorna. The marsh, with its deceptive tides, is a beautiful but threatening place. Virginia's new parents' marriage is full of secrets and tensions she doesn't quite understand, and their wealthy neighbor, Max Deering, drops by too often, taking an unwholesome interest in the family's affairs. Only Clem offers a true sense of home. War feels far away among the birds and shifting sands?until the day a German fighter plane crashes into the marsh, and Clem ventures out to rescue the airman. What happens next sets into motion a crime so devastating it will haunt Virginia for the rest of her life. Seventy-five years later, she finds herself drawn back to the marsh, and to a teenage girl who appears there, nearly frozen and burdened by her own secrets. In her, Virginia might have a chance at retribution and a way to right a grave mistake she made as a child. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Yellow Papers Dominque Wilson 2014 The Yellow Papers (2014) is a novel by Australian writer Dominique Wilson which is bookended by the stories of care experienced characters. At age 7 Chen Mu is sent from China to the US to study. 9 years later, Chen Mu, now a keen botanist, makes his way - accidentally - to Australia.r 20 years. The story concludes with Huang Ho, who lives for a while with his grandmother in Hong Kong before she sends him to university in Adelaide, South Australia. Being a keen follower of Mao Zedong (1893-1976), he is anxious to get back to China. In between are the stories of other Australian and Chinese nationals who become friends across a vast historical sweep of time. External Website

Films/Videos Shooting Fish ​ 1997 Two orphans - one from England and from the US - meet in their 20s and work together to scam wealthy people of their money in order to buy the 'stately home' they've long dreamed about owning. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Too Much Lip Melissa Lucashenko 2018 A dark and funny new novel from the multi-award-winning author of Mullumbimby. One of the principal characters in Too Much Lip is a kinship carer for 2 children. The children, who had previously lived with their grandmother, would have been taken by the "Childstealers" if Michael Salter, aka Black Superman, hadn't stepped in. External Website

Films/Videos Clan Library ​ 2021 CLAN was founded in July 2000 by two Sydney Care Leavers, Joanna Penglase, and Leonie Sheedy. Leonie was a state ward in Victoria, who grew up in a Catholic Children’s Home. Joanna grew up in NSW, in a non-government Children’s Home that was run as a business under licence from the Child Welfare Department (now DoCS). Their childhoods spanned the decades, after WW2, the late 1940s, 50s and 60s. They met when Joanna was researching her PHD thesis, based on her experience growing up in a Home and the stories of 90 other people who grew up in care in NSW. Joanna put out over 150 ads in local newspapers to reach out to other care leavers. Leonie and Joanna met up when Joanna’s thesis was finished and so they decided to start a support and advocacy group for people like us – Care Leavers of Australia Network, or CLAN. The library in Geelong holds over 600 books External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Someone Else's Skin Sarah Hilary 2016 Introducing DI Marnie Rome, called to a women's refuge to take a routine witness statement, DI Marnie Rome instead walks in on an attempted murder. Trying to uncover the truth from layers of secrets, Marnie finds herself confronting her own demons. Because she, of all people, knows that it can be those closest to us we should fear the most..Five years ago, her family home was the scene of a shocking and bloody crime that left her parents dead and her foster brother in prison. Winner of the Theakston's 2015 Crime Novel of the Year, and a 2014 Richard and Judy Book Club pick. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Ghost of Lily Painter Caitlin Davies 2011 The first time Annie Sweet sees 43 Stanley Road, the house is so perfect she almost feels as though it has chosen her. She longs to move in, but with her husband seeming more distant, and her daughter wrapped up in her friends and new school, Annie is left alone to mull over the past. Soon she becomes consumed by the house and everyone who has lived there before her, especially a young chorus girl called Lily Painter, a rising star of the music hall whose sparkling performances were the talk of the town. In Edwardian London, two notorious baby farmers, lured young unmarried mothers with the promise adopting their babies and offering them a better life. External Website